We were so lucky to have friends and supporters come out to celebrate both Viens Avec Moi's 2nd anniversary and our second collection. Amongst friends we toasted the past year's successes, shopped sparkly racks at the store and unveiled our newest line.

After a few weeks of planning the Fall Forward came together beautifully. We couldn't ask for a better co-host then Models International Management, who not only provided a stunning cast for our party, but such a fun company to work with to put the event together. Check out the video above to see what it was all about!

On Wednesday August 23rd Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation (ORCF) supporters and fashion notables descended on Holt Renfrew for the first of its kind shopping party. With Holts donating 20% of sales to the ORCF, the event acted not only as a fundraiser but as a fashion preview of what was to come for Fall. Pink sparkling was served, a fashion show featuring some of our style crushes decked out in Holt Renfrew fashions and style tutorials put on by holts staff filled the evening.

Holt Renfrew's support didn't stop at their donation, they also allowed us to create a signature bracelet to be sold the day of the party.

Overall we couldn't think of a better way to launch our fundraising season!

For those that attending the Models International Management & Courage Brand fundraiser at Holt Renfrew Ottawa last night you were a set a fresh eyes on a lot of hard work that has gone on over the past month. Sometimes the behind the scenes stuff gets lost- so before we post any event pictures we wanted to shine some attention on everyone who helped us prepare!

Holt Renfrew approached Models International Management about 4 weeks ago to discuss one of Holt Renfrew's new initiatives. For the first time in years Holts wanted to open their doors to local businesses to help raise funds for charities the serve the the community. Lucky for us, the amazing team at MIM asked to team up with them for Ottawa's first of it's kind fundraiser. With only three weeks to come up with a concept and execute it - we needed a plan.

A few Bridgehead teas later we had come up with our concepts and our name 'The Fall Forward'. The first order of business was to get our invite out ASAP, but we wanted to make sure it looked great. We had two concepts one for our in store marketing and one for our invites and we started working on both immediately.

For our in store branding we enlisted the amazing and terribly fashionable Danyelle James (AKA DJ) to help style our shoot. We took inspiration from the Things Organized Neatly Tumblr to do our fall fashion edits for men and women.

Here are some of the images that caught our eye that we used as party of our story board:

After meeting with DJ we sent her on a mission to Holt Renfrew to pick out "our choices" for Fall accessories must haves. Back at Models International, we put them all together. After much rearranging and measuring we called in Frank Begin, also of MIM, to shoot our edits.

We shot everything on a concrete background first- a look we loved- but didn't end up using.

What we ended up using for our event branding was both women's and men's items curated together on a clean white back drop. ( which you'll see later )

We also explored the idea of showcasing both a women's and men's shoes, or a jacket lapel as part of our invite. Here are more from our story board:

All of our inspirations were sent to our graphic design sponsor, Fancy Boys- who did such an amazing job. We shared this Pinterest board we created for DJ to help get across the look we were going for.

We ended up staying with our all white picture- but what they came up with was truly creative and we wanted to share it here.

With a week to go to our event, more amazing news came from Holt Renfrew. In the craziest turn of events head office had agreed to allow us to sell Courage Bracelets at the Fall Forward, if we had our own method of payment. Beyond thrilled we got to work on making them. We visited our sponsors Sassy Beads to help procure our supplies. In attempts to not clear them out of all their stock we also engaged a new sponsor Rainbow Minerals & Beading to supply us with the waxed cotton for our bracelets.

We then proceeded to hand make about 150 bracelets for the night. Two styles were designed- one with a large washer-like brass bead, and these smaller beads pictured above. After experimenting with leather, we opted to use a waxed cotton because it wears much better and the knots stayed in place. They turned out beautifully especially with The Printing House's amazing label that had to be done in Toronto based on it's unique style!

That wasn't the only thing The Printing House took care of- they printed all of our signage including our amazing backdrop and postcards that you can see here!

In the week leading up to the event we had the opportunity to bring on amazing sponsors to help us out like Farbs Kitchen, Peroni, Henkell, Jordan David of Gold Frames and Ottawa Special Events.

We also had so much fun picking out the people that were going to star in our fashion show. After discussing people in Ottawa who's style we loved- we ended up with 8 fashion forward gentlemen and ladies to rock our runway.

Working with MIM on this project as been so rewarding. You'd be pressed to find more dedicated people then their team.

Megan doing some heavy lifting bringing back all of our Holts goodies!

We can't wait to show you our official party pictures and video coming soon.

What a night! We were absolutely thrilled by how many supporters we had at our launch this past weekend. When it was all said and done we sold a total of 36 bracelets. Almost at the mid point to our $2000 goal, we've raised $830 for the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation.

The night was filled with tasty eats by highly anticipated Supply & Demand cook Adam Vettorel. With the help of Chris Schlesak, he prepared three beautiful tartare canapés at his corner "tartare bar" that included salmon, moose(!!!) and beet bites. His hardcore knife skills were so impressive, we are beyond excited for the opening of Supply & Demand raw bar towards the end of 2012.

Behold the beet tartare

Thanks to the generosity of the VAM ladies, we also had tunes, desserts, drinks flowing all night which made for a memorable evening of shopping, celebrating and of course maybe a little partying :)